Readers' Choice

It's been on the same corner of Coast Highway for 40 years, across from the Harbor House Café. Dana Point Car Wash's super-cheap U-Ride Thru "inflation fighter #3" is just $5.99. If you have any qualms about attaching your car to those things, relax, the U-Ride Thru got all brand-new mechanical guts and a track back in June. But if you've waited too long to wash your car, it's going to need a hand wash, dry and vacuum from the Custom Hand Wash menu to get rid of any sticky business. For as little as $14.99, you can have your vehicle fully cleaned and dried—all by hand. Dana Point Car Wash offers full detail service, too, for a whole lot more. If you hang around while the workers clean your car (the wait is almost always less than half an hour), you'll witness the jokey camaraderie they have with one another. You might not understand Spanish, but if you're a reader of this paper, you'll pick out the occasional pendejo with no problem. Or go get a coffee at the bike place across Violet Lantern or shop the vintage store across the highway.

Gabrielle Dion is not only one of the best bartenders in Orange County, but she also runs the best bar store in the land. Need some non-Angostura bitters? Head to the Mixing Glass in the South Coast Collection's OC Mix. Need some quality barware? Head to the Mixing Glass. Need a goddamn absinthe spoon? Yeah, you can probably find it there. And then while you're shopping, go ahead and take advantage of Dion's knowledge and sign up for one of her classes. There's really nowhere else you'll need to visit to outfit the hardware side of your bar. Now, if only there were a cocktail bar at the Mix. . . .

Forget Sur La Table and Williams-Sonoma, as purty as they are for your kitchenware needs: Go to H-Mart. You might feel a little uncomfortable at first, but it's a breeze. Pots and pans? Cheap, normal-looking and functional. Chopsticks? So many chopsticks. And the knives? Who needs Shun or Henckels when you have a Kiwi cleaver that can lop off your hand? Best yet, it costs $8 and comes wrapped in plastic in a cardboard box full of other Kiwi cleavers. Nice kitchen stuff is a nice luxury, sure, but seriously, next time you're buying sashimi, take a walk down the kitchen aisle. Dare you to leave without a cleaver.

This fall, Japanese fashion giant Uniqlo opened in South Coast Plaza and finally gave young twentysomething men in Orange County a place to buy basics that isn't H&M, American Apparel or, well, Target. The premise is exciting: Affordable, high-quality basics. Timeless, but well-fit cuts. Flexible styles. It's something that should've happened years ago. But then, years ago, Uniqlo didn't even have any U.S. locations. It didn't operate in the country until 2005, when the company quietly opened three small stores on the East Coast. The first West Coast location didn't open until 2012, and that one is in San Francisco. The buzz quickly outgrew the brick-and-mortars, and soon people were buying through proxy services, visiting stores while on vacation, and biting the bullet and buying blind online. The South Coast store is the first in Southern California, after 16 other Uniqlos have opened in distinctly less Asian areas of the United States. But hey, that'll be forgiven—just give us some cheap oxfords.

Usually when one hears of a high-school gym teacher's heroism, it involves a winning strategy to remove the itch from jock straps. (God bless you, Mr. Reusch.) But that's not why the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, honored 57-year-old Richard Irvin "Rick" Moore of Laguna Niguel. On Aug. 14, 2013, the teacher from Creekside High School in Irvine was vacationing in Maui; he heard a scream and saw a young woman in bloodied water about 150 feet off a beach. Without regard for his own safety, Moore darted across the sand, jumped into the surf and rescued the 20-year-old, who'd been bitten by a tiger shark. Sadly, the German national died about a week later in a hospital. Moore was among 22 people honored in July with medals and cash awards from the organization named for Pittsburgh industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

The Fullerton-based nonprofit Orange County Veterans Employment Committee (OCVEC) helps connect returning (or long-returned) U.S. veterans with the resources available for them. The goal is to match vets who need jobs and services with those who can provide those things, especially if the providers are veterans themselves. The state Employment Development Department has co-sponsored job fairs with OCVEC, and the nonprofit has sent vets to job centers in Irvine, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Buena Park and Westminster. To help get vets where they need to be, OCVEC has provided gas cards, bus passes, career-development training, OSHA certification fees, security-guard card fees, state licensing fees, work clothing, tools, computers and networking assistance. Considering the wars this country is getting out of—as well as, alas, getting into—OCVEC's work is only going to grow more critical in the years ahead.